WordPress.org

1. jwbjerk
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I've just started blogging less than a month ago. In general i'm eager to get comments, or have other sites link to my blog. But there's one entity, usmediaweb.net , that's got me a little confused.
   Askimet has twice caught comments from usmediaweb that consisted solely of my username, 'jwbjerk'. I assume the comment was somehow automatically generated.
   Checking out the website, i found the about the first 50 words of the two posts repeated. with a link to my site.

   • I haven't made up my mind to being annoyed at being quoted like this, but the comments are annoying. Is it some failing method of communication between the 2 websites?
   • Also the website claims: "Unless otherwise specified, all content is made available under the Creative Commons License." There is no licensing statement on my blog, but i don't see why this site can choose one for me.
   • There doesn't seem to be any way to contact this site.

   I really don't know anything about the "etiquette" of blogging, and would like to know how i should feel about this, and if there's anything i can do about.

2. whooami
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   its a splog, and theyre prolly grabbing your content through your feed.

   1. If you can locate the exact IP thats grabbing the feed you can block it completely using an .htaccess.

   2. if you dont want to do that, you can use excerpts for your feed, that wont keep them from taking the excerpt though.

   3. There are also plugins for putting copyright messages into your feed.

   I would do a combination of all 3, in fact I do.

   Its a shame that plugin writers saw fit to write plugins that allow wordpress blogs to steal (yes I said steal) someone else's content and then decided to write plugins that add copyright to the stolen feeds. Its like the doctor that charges 2K to install breast implants, and then charges 10K to take out the breast implants after the the person has gotten sick from them. Its irony at its best.

   As an aside, its a good idea to pay very close attn to what Google comes up with when you put in your domain name as the query. splogs are unfortuntely, VERY common, and due to the "wonderful" plugins Ive already mentioned, a good deal of them are wp sites.

   a good example:

   http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:AcAInIyq5joJ:mimido.info/real/chil/porn/+%22village-idiot.org%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=83

   my url is mentioned, hmm. and looky, its wp.

3. jwbjerk
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Whooami, thanks for the reply.
   Can someone explain, "useing excerpts for your feed" ?
   I poked around the admin interface and WP support without finding anything relavant.

4. bryce
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Hi there,

   Yes this is really the guy who was splogging your stuff. I have written a few posts on my site regarding the actions I took. In short, it was an ill attempt to recreate something like the Google News system (but by bloggers only). I experimented with a few things that did not work. I never meant to "steal" anyones work at all, in fact I never even thought about it as stealing. I got an email yesterday from Feedburner, basically asking me to stop doing what I was doing, and of course I complied. There is a post on the site explaining how to have your link and content removed from the site if you wish to do so.
   About the Creative Commons issue: That was part of the original theme, and I had taken it out previously. I did a few things, and basically reloaded the entire theme again, and did not take that disclaimer out.

   Once again, I apologize for the issues I caused everyone.
   Also, I never took anyones feed directly from their site, I used all Icerocket feeds.

5. jwbjerk
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   No hard feelings...

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